HOW to play It

as stocks like ibm, Qualcomm and Google have proved, companies that foster innovation and patents can be great investments. i find these gems by, first, screening among tech, communications, biotech and pharma and then eliminating stocks with nosebleed enterprisevalue-to-sales ratios. Then i home in on companies on my least-bad-value-growth list that rank tops in various measures of analyst sentiment, including earnings surprises and upward revisions. Working this way, i found two patent-rich companies that have been creating and commercializing innovative solutions to well-established problems. cybersecurity firm Fireeye is finding new ways to detect and prevent system breaches and respond to hackers who get through. Pure Storage, which has some 600 patents, helps enterprises cost-effectively solve and manage still rapidly escalating cloud-based storage needs.